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Passing on a race to the top
It’s a competition for school funding. States across the country are applying for federal grants for public education, but the majority of them will not be awarded the federal money.
According to Superintendent Nancy Sebring Iowa is changing legislation in order to be more appealing to the Federal Department of Education, who ultimately decides whether Iowa gets awarded funding or not.
The bill aimed to lift the cap on charter schools in Iowa, making it possible to change persistently low achieving schools into charter schools. This happens to be one of the models suggested by the government to transform low achieving schools.
The change in legislation did not come without its roadblocks.
According to Sebring there was language in the bill requiring what is called collective bargaining between the teacher’s union and the school board on the matter of school transformation.
“The Collective Bargaining process is a formal negotiation between the school board and the teacher’s union typically used to establish salary and benefits. Our school board felt that the requirement to collectively bargain was unnecessarily restrictive to the conversation of improving schools,” Sebring said.
According to Sebring this would be one of the main reasons that 140 school districts in Iowa opted to not submit their memorandums of understanding (MOUs) or agreements to the application.
According to the President of the Des Moines Education Association Alan Young the DMPS board was “confused.” It was Young’s understanding that the school board opted out of the application because they were afraid of the reform models.
“In my opinion the district’s decision to not apply for the Race To The Top (RTTT) grant was stupid. The district was confused at the time of signing on the requirements. They thought that the four reform models were attached to the RTTT grant, and were against collective bargaining on the subject of school transformations,” Young said.
As the president of the teacher’s union Young is in support of collective bargaining.
“It’s not about excluding anyone from the discussion about school transformation, we (the teachers union) just want to be included,” Young said.
Sebring disagrees with Young on the fact that collective bargaining does not exclude the public. Sebring feels it important that students, parents, public residents and teachers are all included in the discussion regarding school transformations, something that she believes will not be possible with the new collective bargaining agreement.
But, according to Sebring the MOU deadline for the RTTT grant has passed and DMPS had chosen not to submit. However another option under the same umbrella of Race To The Top is still on the table.DMPS is considering signing on to what is called a School Improvement Grant (SIG) which is federal money for persistently low achieving schools. This money, however, does not come without strings attached.
Those “strings” attached to the SIG would be complying to one of the four basic reform models (see sidebar).
With the possibility of his job, along with fifty percent of the school’s staffs jobs on the chopping block, Principal Doug Wheeler does not support the application for SIG. According to Wheeler, the government is treating school transformations in the same regard they would corporation bailouts.
“If you look at the reform models they are not much different than corporations; they are very business intensive. Sure, there are benefits to being a bank and being bailed out, but if you look, many of the banks are trying to pay the money back so they don’t have to live under the government rules,” Wheeler said.
According to Wheeler the government regulations on this money are unrealistic. However, Superintendent Sebring disagrees.
Aside from the requirement of collective bargaining on school transformations, Sebring thinks that it would benefit Iowa to apply for the SIG, which could mean big changes, especially in the Des Moines Public School District
.